Swarms of people turned out at Lake Hollywood Park on Sunday morning to look for hidden cash.
David Crane — Staff photographer

The mystery benefactor known as @HiddenCash struck again Sunday at Lake Hollywood Park and Hollenbeck Park, hiding bottles filled with money in the last treasure hunts planned in Los Angeles before the anonymous San Francisco resident returned home.

The two drops capped five days of social-media fueled scavenger hunts in the greater Los Angeles area, which has caused a frenzy on Twitter, among local news media and among throngs of money seekers who mostly enjoy the challenge of trying to find the cash.

As hundreds swarmed Hollenbeck Park in Boyle Heights, Felipe Flores, 16, of Echo Park found one of nine bottles hidden at this location after searching a row of bushes.

It was “like a rush,” Flores said, as he held the purple bottle for blowing bubbles in his hand. “(I’m) excited and happy. Out of hundreds or thousands (of people) even I found this one.”

Flores said he might use the cash to pay his phone bill and after prompting from his sister, Karina Villalobos, 27, opted to give $20 out of the $80 he found to a vendor selling chips and other edibles at the park.

“The lady works hard every day,” he said. “I felt good about it because I’m helping other people out.”

Maria Mendoza, 47, of Chicago was in town for her niece’s college graduation and also found a bottle that contained $100 at Hollenbeck Park hidden in some bushes.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Mendoza, who is an immigrant from Michoacan, Mexico, said in Spanish. “Well, yes, I believed it but when I found it I gave thanks to this man who is helping people. It’s a good deed.”

Police said there were no major problems although several vehicles were cited for being parked illegally on Boyle Avenue near Hollenbeck Park, according to Sgt. Gabriel Lara, a watch commander with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck Community Police Station. Boyle Avenue was blocked at 4th street by a police car in an effort to control congestion.

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Lara said such behavior could pose a safety hazard, “especially if you have people abandoning their vehicle in the roadway to find $80 or $100 in cash.”

With traffic slowed to a crawl on the Fourth Street offramp on the 101 Freeway southbound, some passengers got out of their cars and ran up the road to reach the park by foot as fast as they could. Others were seen being dropped off near the park at stop lights.

Hannah Rolfe, 26, who lives in downtown Los Angeles, said she had multiple near-misses with cars as she cycled from Grand Park, where she initially thought the final cash drop would be, to Hollenbeck Park after it became clear that was the correct location.

“I almost got hit by like three cars coming down 4th (Street) because people were driving erratically trying to get here faster,” Rolfe said. “I guess it is a little dangerous. People get really excited and I think when that level of excitement is around, common sense kind of goes out the window.”

In his first clue Sunday morning, the donor asked on Twitter, “LA: Are you ready to play with bubbles today???” The tweet included a photo of a yellow plastic bottle amid a backdrop of trees. Within minutes, the tweet had more than 1,000 favorites and more than 460 retweets.

A follow-up clue to Twitter sleuths directed them to a “park near famous sign.” It included images of a dog and a mountain. A third clue narrowed the search. It included a photo of a bottle filled with bubble solution filled with cash, with the iconic Hollywood sign in the background.

“Hiddencash playing tourist. There are 9 bubbles by the K9s (near here!),” the tweet read.

Treasure hunters quickly figured out the clues and descended on Lake Hollywood Park, where lucky ones found the bottles of bubble solution each containing $80 to $100 in cash.

Isobelle Willis, 24, of Los Feliz found one of the bottles, which contained $80.

The experience, and media attention, left her a little “overwhelmed,” she said, “but it was fun.”

Willis said she was thinking about taking the cash to a sushi restaurant.

“Free lunch today, and tomorrow, probably. I can even buy my sister lunch,” she said.

Yesenia Morales, 36, of Los Angeles’ Mid-Wilshire District, who searched the park with her two daughters, found a bottle containing $80 after about 25 minutes of looking around. The bottle was buried on a trail, she said.

“It’s fun. I’ve always wanted to do something like this,” she said. “I wanted to experience it with my family and I did. It’s fun to actually find something.”

When asked about how she feels about the mystery benefactor, Morales responded: “If I had the opportunity to do that, I think I would do it too. I think it’s great. To each his own. ...If that makes him happy, let him do that.”

Morales’ daughter, Scarlett Castro, 18, who was also searching for hidden cash, said she was happy for her mother.

“I hope she spends it on her; she doesn’t do much for herself,” Castro said. “She’s always thinking of us.”

Though she hadn’t found any of the hidden money, Liz Gonzales, 26, of Silver Lake said she went to the park Sunday “for the fun of it.” She brought her Chihuahua puppy, Milo, along.

She said she enjoyed the community spirit and camaraderie of the treasure hunt, “and then just laughing about it at the end.”

The benefactor, who has remained unidentified, started what he calls his “anonymous social experiment for good” in San Francisco, then San Jose before coming to Los Angeles on Wednesday night. Since then, he has also hidden envelopes of cash at Griffith Park, around Burbank Empire Center, in Pasadena and San Marino and at Hermosa Beach and left clues on his Twitter account pointing his followers in the right direction.

As of Sunday evening, @HiddenCash had about 420,000 followers on Twitter in a little over a week. He has not responded to questions from the Los Angeles Daily News.

Meanwhile, other organizations took advantage of the social media excitement, announcing treasure hunts of their own.

Officials at Santa Anita Park cited @HiddenCash as inspiration when it announced Friday via it’s own Twitter account that it would hide four cash-filled envelopes in the park’s infield both Saturday and Sunday.

The Twitter account for wildfire prevention spokesbear Smokey Bear joined in the fun as well, posting clues that led to a small, stuffed Smokey secreted at Griffith Park.

In a tweet authored about an hour after the final Los Angeles-area treasure hunt began, @HiddenCash offered a final clue, indicating where the social experiment may be headed next.

“Got a small surprise for Bakersfield coming. Anyone there,” read the message.